Get you some of this, Barack Obama. I present the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, leftist, ripping Mr. Obama to shreds...
ONE day during the 2008 campaign, as Barack Obama read the foreboding news of the mounting economic and military catastrophes that W. was bequeathing his successor, he dryly remarked to aides: “Maybe I should throw the game.”
I'm'a gonna analyze this from the top down. All emboldenings mine.
The first paragraph throws back to BHO's beginning; heady times indeed, the Man from Nowhere, with Zero qualifications (barely a Senator, an uncompleted term, but that smooth voice!) knocks Hillary Clinton up better than Bill could, and seizes the moment; rides a wave of HOPE and CHANGE into the White House, and...stalls.
Next, Maureen...
On the razor’s edge of another recession; blocked at every turn by Republicans determined to slice him up at any cost; starting an unexpectedly daunting re-election bid; and puzzling over how to make a prime-time speech about infrastructure and payroll taxes soar, maybe President Obama is wishing that he had thrown the game.
The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a really bad spot.
Yeah, he's got me all torn up inside too, Maureen. Not because I didn't want him to fail (I did) but because his failure has damaged this Republic to such a degree that it may be unrepairable. I'm torn up because we didn't do more to stop his guy when we had a chance. I blame McCain, for becoming the nominee when it should've been Fred Thompson.
Oh well, we are now where we are now. Where are we, Maureen?
His Republican rivals for 2012 have gone to town on the Labor Day weekend news of zero job growth, using the same line of attack Hillary used in 2008: Enough with the big speeches! What about some action?
Polls show that most Americans still like and trust the president; but they may no longer have faith that he’s a smarty-pants who can fix the economy.
We are at Zero, Maureen. This President's capabilities to fix anything economic are Zero. Speech or no speech, there's gonna be Zero done-for on this economy until BHO's gotten the boot.
So, Maureen, who's fault is it? Take your best shot...
Just as Obama miscalculated in 2009 when Democrats had total control of Congress, holding out hope that G.O.P. lawmakers would come around on health care after all but three senators had refused to vote for the stimulus bill; just as he misread John Boehner this summer, clinging like a scorned lover to a dream that the speaker would drop his demanding new inamorata, the Tea Party, to strike a “grand” budget bargain, so the president once more set a trap for himself and gave Boehner the opportunity to dis him on the timing of his jobs speech this week.
Obama’s re-election chances depend on painting the Republicans as disrespectful. So why would the White House act disrespectful by scheduling a speech to a joint session of Congress at the exact time when the Republicans already had a debate planned?
Nice of you to notice.
Barack Obama doesn't care about anyone but himself, Maureen. He didn't even ask Boehner if he could call a joint session of congress (that's a privilege in our country: we are NOT a top-down King in Command dealio here, he had to ask permission to address Congress). Arbitrarily choosing a date and expecting everyone to go along wasn't a very Presidential thing to do, not so smart at all, but symptomatic of his narcissistic me-first-always style.
Maureen...
And why is the White House so cocky about Obama as a TV draw against quick-draw Rick Perry? As James Carville acerbically noted, given a choice between watching an Obama speech and a G.O.P. debate, “I’d watch the debate, and I’m not even a Republican.”
The White House caved, of course, and moved to Thursday, because there’s nothing the Republicans say that he won’t eagerly meet halfway.
No. 2 on David Letterman’s Top Ten List of the president’s plans for Labor Day: “Pretty much whatever the Republicans tell him he can do.”
I'm emphasizing those, because they bring a smile to my stone face.
More...
On MSNBC, the anchors were wistfully listening to old F.D.R. speeches, wishing that this president had some of that fight. But Obama can’t turn into F.D.R. for the campaign because he aspires to the class that F.D.R. was a traitor to; and he can’t turn into Harry Truman because he lacks the common touch. He has an acquired elitism.
'Aquired', Maureen? Better read up on Mr. Obama, Maureen.
"Yet his haughty demeanor, his stilted language when off the teleprompter, his cultural likes and dislikes, bespeak an upbringing in an environment at once so upscale and so leftist that it makes him almost a foreigner to ordinary Americans."
Nothing acquired about his elitism, Marueen. He was bred to it, indoctrinated in it, and we suffer for it.
Carry on...
MSNBC’s Matt Miller offered “a public service” to journalists talking about Obama — a list of synonyms for cave: “Buckle, fold, concede, bend, defer, submit, give in, knuckle under, kowtow, surrender, yield, comply, capitulate.”
And it wasn’t exactly Morning in America when Obama sent out a mass e-mail to supporters Wednesday under the heading “Frustrated.”
It unfortunately echoed a November 2010 parody in The Onion with the headline, “Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail.”
“Throughout,” The Onion teased, “the president expressed his aggravation on subjects as disparate as the war in Afghanistan, the sluggish economic recovery, his live-in mother-in-law, China’s undervalued currency, Boston’s Logan Airport, and tort reform.”
Now you're just piling on, Maureen. You've beaten BHO to within an inch of being a clean rug, so, please! you're giving me apoplexy. Or something.
But she' not done...
You know you’re in trouble when Harry Reid says you should be more aggressive.
If the languid Obama had not done his usual irritating fourth-quarter play, if he had presented a jobs plan a year ago and fought for it, he wouldn’t have needed to elevate the setting. How will he up the ante next time? A speech from the space station?
No, Maureen, won't be any speech from the space station. Barack Obama shut down NASA, remember? We can't even go up to low-earth orbit anymore. There's word that the space station might be in jeopardy of falling to earth (much like BHO's presidency). Oh, and we've a comet (C2010 X1, Elenin) passing astronomically very close to Earth; a shame we can't get any closer to it before it swooshes by. We're stuck on this mudball forever, it seems.
You've the floor, Maureen...
Republicans who are worried about being political props have a point. The president is using the power of the incumbency and a sacred occasion for a political speech.
Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.
Just, wow. All of Barack's symbolism, piled in a heap and set afire by Maureen Dowd. Great job of it! Hell, I can't recall when I've bashed his Greek columns, his Teleprompter and his expectant, lordy speeches all in just a couple paragraphs.
This is why the NYT pays her the big bucks, don't you know.
Let's finish with Maureen...
The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant.
After pushing and shoving and caving to get on TV, the president’s advisers immediately began warning that the long-yearned-for jobs speech wasn’t going to be that awe-inspiring.
“The issue isn’t the size or the newness of the ideas,” one said. “It’s less the substance than how he says it, whether he seizes the moment.”The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.
Ka-ZING!
You can see why I'm impressed with the Dowd this morning. She's put together a flaming barb and launched it square on target.
But all those words, Maureen! We've already set up a nice little six-letter acronym that would suffice: SCOAMF.
All of that you wrote and you could've been boiled down and presented in just 6 letters.
But don't get me wrong; you are right about all you've posted, just a bit windy is all.
Do keep up the good work, Maureen.
No comments:
Post a Comment